The Accursed (10 page)

For, in the confusion of the moment, when help was being summoned, and Mrs. Cleveland was weeping loudly in distress, Winslow had tried to comfort her by saying it would be all right now, as “the spirit of your little daughter appears to have left us.”

Though asked afterward by Josiah and Annabel if he’d seen the apparition, Winslow Slade said, curtly: “No. There are no ‘spirits’ in Christendom.”

While in the company of the distressed others, Annabel had said very little; but when at last they were alone together, in the evening, at Crosswicks Manse, Annabel confided in Josiah: “Ruth, you say? He saw his daughter Ruth outside the window? Oh the poor child—you know, Josiah, I had rarely seen her, in life—but lately in dreams, since her death, Ruth has beckoned to me, too—I am so frightened
why
.”

ANGEL TRUMPET; OR, “MR. MAYTE OF VIRGINIA”

I
t was just two days later, on the Princeton University campus, that Josiah Slade had an adventure of sorts of a significance he couldn’t have guessed at the time; though he felt its disagreeable nature and was chilled to the soul, as if sensing some of what lay ahead.

His mission was to visit Professor Pearce van Dyck, a former philosophy teacher of his, whose office was on the second floor of the new Gothic building called Pyne, eventually to be known as East Pyne; and whose advice, or informed counsel, Josiah very much desired. Josiah recalled his undergraduate days at Princeton when he had flailed about in his studies, never quite knowing what he wanted to do: study ancient languages, including Hebrew and Aramaic, that he might read the Holy Scripture for himself, to satisfy the many questions raised by the King James translation, which his grandfather Slade had not been able to answer for him; or was he inclined to science—botany, biology, geology; or was he inclined to history—the blood-steeped soil of Europe, or the more virginal, though scarcely less bloodied, soil of the New World? As he had grown restless after a few weeks at West Point, so Josiah had been restless as an undergraduate, taking time off from his studies to “travel”—to “prowl about,” at times not unlike a common vagabond, under the spell of Jack London’s Klondike tales or, less desperately, the Mark Twain of
Life on the Mississippi.
(In some way not entirely explained, Josiah had earned a fair amount of money in the West; though the sum was being rapidly depleted, he did not yet have to depend upon his family to support him.)

At Princeton, Josiah had been conscripted to play on the football team, and on the hockey and softball teams; he’d spent a few back-aching weeks on the crew team, practice-rowing in the chill dawn through spectral mists rising from Lake Carnegie with the consoling thought that such a cooperative sport was a rebuke to the exhibitionist athlete he so disliked, and recognized in himself. And Josiah had ignored a bid from the most exclusive eating–(and drinking)–club on Prospect Avenue, Ivy, without offering any explanation to his surprised, disappointed and disapproving club-brothers, other than a shrug of the shoulders: “One evening is fairly much all evenings, at Ivy; having sampled three and a half weeks of such evenings, I am satisfied that I have sampled them all.”

There was a spirit of forced camaraderie among the Princeton boys—or as they wished to think of themselves,
young men.
As if nothing mattered so much as one another: to be respected, to be liked, to be admired, to be “popular.” Grades scarcely mattered—if you studied, you were mocked as a
poler
. A gentleman had no need of a grade beyond “C”—for a gentleman was not going to make his living by his wits, surely. And so you joined a club, or two clubs; or three. You went out for sports as others did, in an affable herd. But, as at West Point he would soon learn that marching
in uniform
was deeply boring, so too Josiah had learned at Princeton that any effort that reached no higher than the height of his classmates had not the power to engage him for very long.

To please his father, he’d persevered at Princeton until after several years he was granted a B.A. degree. The sheepskin diploma he hid away at once, and may have lost.

Such independence filled him with a reckless sort of elation—but then, he felt such a reaction of melancholy, he could not bear to be alone. And so he sought out his most sympathetic instructor, Pearce van Dyck, who had always welcomed him into his commodious office with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, leather chairs and sofa, and a view, through leaded-glass windows, of the university “chapel”—large and impressive as any church.

Josiah thought
Professor van Dyck will speak frankly. Of all persons I know.

So it happened, Josiah knocked on the opened door of van Dyck’s office, and was invited inside; Pyne Hall was agreeably bustling, and populated by undergraduates hurrying to lectures, or departing lectures in thunderous herds on the stairs, and no one took notice of Josiah in his worn tweed “blazer” and gabardine trousers, who might have been one of them, except for his furrowed brow and a more mature intensity in his eyes. “Josiah, hello! This is a very pleasant surprise.”

Between the philosophy professor and the young man there had long existed a relaxed and companionable relationship, for their families were acquainted, and van Dyck had known Josiah since earliest childhood. In his classes, Josiah was enough of a good student to merit high grades; at times, even a brilliant and capricious student, but not one subject to troubling moods, or at least not in van Dyck’s company. The professor, a specialist in Kantian idealism, was middle-aged at this time, taciturn by nature, scholarly and earnest rather than “popular” with his students; Josiah did not feel nearly so comfortable with his own father, as he did with Pearce van Dyck.

The great value of philosophy is, one cuts through subterfuge at once; one “goes for the jugular.” And so Josiah said, with no preamble, before he’d even taken a seat in van Dyck’s office, “Professor, what do you make of this?”—holding out for van Dyck to see, in both his hands, a gathering of broken and bruised lily petals, and a few stems and leaves, badly desiccated and pungent-smelling.

Van Dyck stared at the lily-remnants, that seemed, in the unsparing sunshine that slanted through a tall window, to be rather a simulacrum of lilies than the actual flowers.

“I think these are ‘calla lilies’—it’s hard to tell, they are so rotted. Where did you get them?”

“I found them.”

“ ‘Found them’—? Where?”

“Beneath my feet, where I happened to be walking. I looked down—and there they were.”

Josiah did not explain that he’d stepped on the calla lily petals when he’d left the Craven house, after the Sunday visit. Glancing down, and he’d seen the desiccated petals, and felt a shiver of recognition.

The dead girl left these behind. The dead child is making a claim on us.

Josiah’s motive for coming to Professor van Dyck was more than merely personal: for van Dyck was known, in addition to his scholarly pursuits, for his extensive amateur’s knowledge of botany and horticulture; the van Dyck garden, behind the family’s house at 87 Hodge Road, was one of the glories of Princeton’s West End.

“I don’t recall where I found these, Professor van Dyck. But I wondered what you thought of them. How you would identify them.”

Josiah spoke slowly, like one who is weighing his words with care.

Van Dyck had spread the bruised petals, the broken stems and leaves, out on his desk. He peered at them, frowning. “The blooms seem aged—very old. Not an ordinary sort of decomposition but something else . . .” He lowered his head to smell, and recoiled at once with a look of consternation. “Why, the odor is
vile
.”

“A sort of chemical odor, I thought. Not organic.”

“Why, look! They are visibly
decomposing
. . .”

Josiah and Pearce van Dyck observed the desiccated lilies crumbling to pieces, and then to dust. A few dried wisps of leaf remained, a single calyx, a near-nauseating odor of rot.

“It must be the reaction of the strong sunlight on the lilies. Some sort of accelerated chemical process . . .”

Van Dyck’s effort to explain the eerie phenomenon seemed to Josiah the very essence of the philosophical temperament: to wrench some sort of sense out of senselessness; to determine logic where there is none. Like the rhyming of poetry, such an effort gives an illusion of comfort.

“Yes. A ‘chemical process.’ I think that must be so.”

“But where did you say you found these? ‘Underfoot’?”

“It was at the Craven house, Professor. On Sunday.”

As Pearce van Dyck and his wife had been at the house also, it was natural for Josiah to explain; but, a moment later, he regretted having said these words, that had the effect of intriguing van Dyck, and whetting his curiosity.

“But—no one had ‘funeral’ lilies there, I’m certain? And these are so
aged
. . .”

“I was just wondering—what you might think. Since you are a horticulturalist.”

Josiah, restless, was on his feet. In his face was an expression of excitement and fatigue—as if he had not slept well the previous night, but had been “tossing and turning” in the grip of Paradox.

A predatory bird with a great sharp beak and vicious talons—Paradox. To be in its grip is to suffer, yet so exquisitely, one might mistake the experience for a kind of ecstasy.

Josiah shook his head, to rid it of such cobwebs of thought. Ah, he was not himself this morning! He had not been “himself”—to a degree—since the episode at the old Craven house, when Grover Cleveland had collapsed; and Annabel had confided in him that the Clevelands’ dead child had come to her in dreams, and had beckoned to
her.

“Josiah, why don’t you sit down, please? You are in no hurry to leave, I assume?”

Josiah, who hadn’t been aware that he was on his feet, and pacing about the office, could not think how to reply.
Was
he in a hurry? But to arrive—
where
?

“There’s a sort of beating pulse in my head, Professor. If I become very still, it is more noticeable, and distracting.”

Van Dyck squinted at him. He had been stooped over his desk, examining the crumbled remains of the calla lilies, and now looked up at Josiah, concerned.

“I hope it wasn’t the smell of these flowers that has made you ill, Josiah. It’s fading now, but it doesn’t seem a
natural
smell . . .”

“Well, Professor! Thank you! You have been very helpful and now—now—I’ll say good-bye.”

“My dear Josiah,” van Dyck protested, “you aren’t leaving so soon, are you? Why don’t you sit down—we can talk about that extraordinary episode on Sunday—poor Grover Cleveland, quite raving, and out of his mind . . . There had been an old story of the Craven house being haunted by the deceitful André, bent on revenging himself on Major Craven. Yet, it seemed, Mr. Cleveland hadn’t seen the ghost of the executed spy but that of his poor daughter Ruth—what do you make of that?”

“There are no ‘spirits’ in Christendom. That’s what I make of it.”

Not quite rudely, Josiah walked away with an airy wave of his hand; and Pearce van Dyck was left behind, baffled that his young friend should be in so curious a mental state, over a handful of desiccated funeral flowers.

Carelessly then Pearce brushed away most of the flower-debris, not noticing that some curled little petals, and fragments of a stem, remained in an opened copy of Spinoza’s
Ethics,
at the very beginning of
Part IV, Of Human Bondage, or, of the Strength of the Emotions.

CROSSING THE UNIVERSITY
campus, at a rapid clip, his broad shoulders hunched in his tweed coat and his head slightly bowed, Josiah was intercepted near the steps of Chancellor Green by the president of the university, Woodrow Wilson, who called out familiarly to him, and who smiled with warmth as if Josiah were one of his family. With a sinking heart Josiah thought
Waylaid! Damn.

Of course Josiah did not continue on his way, as he’d have liked; instead, he paused to speak with Woodrow Wilson, or rather, to allow Woodrow Wilson to speak with him.

Wilson was in the company of a stranger, to whom he introduced Josiah: a singularly ugly man Josiah thought him, with a flaccid skin, fish-belly-white, and close-set eyes of some intense though unnatural-seeming color like bronze; and a reptilian manner about the lips, his tongue quick-darting and moist, as he smiled an unctuous smile that Josiah found particularly offensive. Yet it was not possible to escape, for Woodrow Wilson insisted upon introducing the stranger to Josiah, and Josiah to the stranger, as if the exchange gave him inordinate pride.

So it happened, Josiah Slade found himself forced to shake hands with “Axson Mayte,” here identified as a lawyer from Carnahan, Virginia, with an association with the Presbyterian Church, whose services, Wilson told Josiah, he hoped to engage in his altercation with the university’s board of trustees. Josiah, who’d heard only the rudiments of gossip concerning Wilson’s feud with Andrew West, the dean of the Graduate School, and considered the issue entirely trivial, smiled courteously and murmured a friendly/perfunctory response, eager to be on his way; but Dr. Wilson adroitly detained him, by laying a paternal hand on his arm, and inquiring after his family—the health of his parents, and his sister and young cousin, and his grandfather Winslow.

How predictable, these social exchanges! How numbingly repetitive! And yet, how to escape them?—Josiah had a vision of himself breaking free, and running out to Nassau Street.

That is madness. From madness, no turning back.

Dr. Wilson was clearly eager to talk; there would be no easy escape. Despite the presence of the stranger from Virginia, whose gaze was fixed upon Josiah with a discomforting intensity, Wilson began to ask particularly after Annabel, for he knew that Josiah and his sister were unusually close; he said he’d heard a “most distressing, and curious” report the previous day regarding the health of Mr. Cleveland, and wondered if Josiah knew anything about the incident.

Discreetly, Josiah said he did not. No.

Discreetly, Josiah would have excused himself and slipped away, except that Woodrow Wilson detained him with a hand lightly on his arm; all the while smiling at the young man, with the familial warmth of Pearce van Dyck, yet with something more intense and more compelling beneath, a subtle sort of coercion. The conversation flailed about like a small bird in a large cage, as Wilson tried also to draw in “Mr. Mayte.”

(How loathsome this “Mayte” struck Josiah!—his loathsomeness had little to do with mere physical ugliness, for such did not usually offend Josiah, but with the man’s fawning, craven, yet presuming manner, and the euphonious nature of his voice; even the inappropriate sportiness of his clothes—for, though he was Woodrow Wilson’s age or more, with a squat, stocky build, he wore a costume suitable for a Princeton undergraduate: a brick-colored blazer with wide-padded shoulders, and a white shirt and narrow dark tie; peg-top trousers, and circular-toed shoes, and a cap resembling a baseball cap set rakishly on his head. It would not have surprised Josiah to see “Mayte” with an eating-club insignia in his lapel, so absurdly did he try to emulate an undergraduate. When Axson Mayte smiled it was to reveal yellowed teeth of which one, an incisor, hooked a good half-inch below its fellows.